VCU grad Wendi Winters among those slain in Capital Gazette shooting

Wendy Anne Winters was born in a Naval hospital in Coronado, California, but always referred to New York City as home, her daughter said to the Baltimore Sun.

Winters, who attended Virginia Commonwealth University from 1971 – 1975, lived with a big-city confidence according to former classmates. The fashion design major at VCU went on to run her own boutique public relations agency in the Big Apple. She returned to Virginia, the area she had grown up and attended school in, 20 years ago to focus on her family and writing career. Winters also attended St. Mary’s Academy in Alexandria as a youth.

Winters was slain on June 28 along with four other staff members at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland.

The VCU Robertson School of Media and Culture extended condolences to the Capital Gazette and families of the victims, as well as a message of journalistic solidarity in a Facebook post last week.

“Journalists speak truth to power; they shine a light on information that the public needs to know. At the Robertson School, we are appalled by today’s climate of hostility toward journalists — demonstrated by Thursday’s assault on journalists and on the public’s right to know,” the statement reads. “As we prepare our students to enter the journalism profession — to report news accurately and fairly and to engage readers and viewers in discussing issues important to them, we stand united beside our students as well as current journalists.”

Wendi (somewhere along the line the “y” became an “i”) Winters was, by all accounts, a pillar of her journalistic community. Author of multiple columns including Home of the Week and Teen of the Week, Winters was a special sections editor and community reporter for The Capital.

In her time at VCU, Winters was known for her sly smile, seemingly always a step ahead of her friends in navigating young adulthood. Standing six feet tall and sporting a thick, dark head of hair, her palpable confidence resulted in a gravitational mystique remembered fondly by classmates, according to Paul Woody of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

She was 65 with four children. Speaking to the Baltimore Sun, her daughter Winters Geimer said she was “a gift to everyone who knew her.”

Her close friends knew her for her detailed Christmas cards, which chronicled the finer aspects of her life and family in an effort to keep loved ones as updated as possible.